Southtree

"Full Resolution... with no quality loss", is what you see when visiting the site. Too bad they can only digital my 16:9 1080i HD mini DV tape at 4:3 and 480p! Called and they said I should have read the help article that explain their limitations. I don't see an asterisk next to "Full Resolution"? Do you?!?

It's been over 2 months and I ONLY sent one video to try out the company. Not sure if they've lost it bc I've not heard back from anyone. How can one video take months to convert?! So disappointing! Horrible company- people are trusting them with their memories and then they have no means of contacting the company. Obviously many might be the elderly and no phone number. The number provided - no one answers.

I'm adding to this bx I'm a regular on google and did not run into any reviews for Southtree. They're making good money but don't care at about your feelings or memories. Pay extra and find someone local. Not sure if it's a coincidence that Southtree finally got back to me after this review: This is the email I received after 2 months of them having my video. Good thing I did a test run!
"Hi RAJ,
Your order is progressing in our facility! Now that everything has been prepped and ready to go, we're just waiting on a spot to open up so that we can start transforming your items from analog to digital."
Our technicians are experts at optimizing every inch of our 50,000 square foot facility, and so we should find a spot for your items soon!"

Are you kidding me? Progressing?! Prepped?! It's one video! We SHOULD have a spot. What does any of this mean?! Ridiculous 🤦🏻‍ you can see the or took a month for them to get the video to their facility and THEN I got the option to wait another 3 months or pay extra. No options for a refund that you initially paid AND sooo impersonal that the emails is giving me options to unsubscribe. This is not a promotional email. Someone should be updating us! Don't do it

I have a box from Southtree that has expired, but the website very clearly says that if you pay a small fee they will reactivate the box. I called to reactivate and the recording said it was a 5 minute wait... 20 minutes later I gave up. Then I emailed... no response... then I submitted a question through the website... no response. I guess I am throwing away the box. Based on the reviews regarding the quality of the service, maybe I am better off cutting my losses. Zero stars.

I sent them a reel to reel tape that contained recordings of myself and my young siblings recorded at the end of the 60's, start of the 70's. Keep in mind, there were no smartphones in those days, and the only way you could have captured sound would have been with a tape recorder or 8/16 mm super 8 film. And so I had that irreplaceable recording of us.

I decided to take a big chance and send it to Southtree - they being the more highly rated of them and LegacyBox (essentially the same company, but set up as a flanker brand).

I had read that it would take weeks, and was totally fine with that. But at the month and a half mark with no response, I shot them an email. What I got back was about as bad as it gets. I was informed that when they opened my box, they found "nothing" in it. Actually, what they would have found was an Amazon bubble wrap envelope, folded in half with the 5" reel inside, and put into the box at a diagonal angle. I did that so it wouldn't shift around. When I purchased the service, I was given the additional option of having other memories be digitized, so I chose Kodak slides. At the last minute, I was too nervous that sending all of these memories would be risky. Good thing.

Because I only had that one envelope in the box, the person who opened it must have seen all that empty space and assumed that I had put nothing in it but the Amazon envelope that was meant to be padding. So they just moronically tossed it.

The email response told me that SouthTree didn't want to leave "any stone unturned", so, they encouraged me to "look around your house to make sure you didn't forget to send it." My looking around equals their "leaving no stone unturned". Well, I did look around my house and distinctly remember putting it in the box. What an asinine, patronizing way to "leave no stone unturned".

Numerous emails were exchanged with them saying they continue investigating, the top management would be alerted, etc. Weeks went by with me clinging onto hope, but it wasn't to be. I sent a final email asking for at least a refund, which they gave (big deal, they had done 0 work anyway), and seeing if they could at least reimburse me for my loss. In the legal community, it would be called "Gross negligence" and "Breach of Contract". I wasn't thinking of a huge payday. A thousand or 2 would have been a drop in the bucket for my loss, but instead, not even a return email from the owners.

GTH SouthTree. You truly suck and you clearly hire only the most incompetent people because it's cheaper. You will never know the loss, to me, of that irreplaceable tape, but somewhere in the trash dump in Chattanooga, TN, sits my tape, lost forever. What a terrible loss that I can never ever replace.

Update: I raised it to 2 1/2 stars & thank the company for the refund they eventually agreed to! Hopefully they start checking machine settings before running transfers.

STAY AWAY FROM SOUTHTREE! I wish I had read your comment (or taken the negative reviews seriously). I sent my last box of 8mm tapes to SOUTHTREE for a supposed 6-week turnaround + called when I did not get them back after 4 months (they did not reply to an email). They said they 'would fast track them for me' (fast! Ha!). They arrived another 3 weeks later. The download was just as r/VHS writes: compressed to smithereens, contrast pushed so high that all light areas are burnt out, all shades are black, blocky pixelation in some. All tapes were just stuffed in cases - none matched + I had to spend time to see if I even got all my tapes back + digitized.
When I asked for my money back they gave me the same run-around: I would need to test playback of my tapes and then send them all back - another 5 months? No way! I asked for a manager + have not heard since.
I had sent an earlier batch to Kodak - and thought THEY were bad, but not quite as bad as SOUTHTREE though I hear they may share facilities. A professional facility did a MUCH better job + now I know they were worth the money.

I attach a Southtree transfer still + same age still - good transfer by another company

Sebt them about 20 videos they all look like they were converted with a cheap 30 dollar conversion kit. No cropping, clipping, restoration of any kind. Just low quality work.

I placed my Southtree order on October 7,2023 and was told that it should take 10-12 weeks for my tapes to get digitized. Not only did my order take 5 months, but when I received my digitized videos, two of them were silent and one of them was missing a portion at the beginning. I payed $227 for this and truly expected better for the price. When I contacted Southtree about this, they told me to send those tapes back, but I have no intent to do this as I believe they would take another 5 months to arrive. I plan on getting these tapes digitized somewhere else and I recommend others get their tapes digitized somewhere else as well!

After 3 months I received the transfer of 4 video cassettes and 4 audio cassettes. There were the following problems with that. They never corrected those and never refunded my money.

1) Two of the MP4 files were IDENTICAL. Since two were identical, they completely missed transferring one of the cassette. Those that were transferred to MP4 had really bad resolution/quality. When I play the original cassettes on my VCR, they have far better quality.

2) I had clearly asked for and paid for 1 DVD per video cassette. They just sent me a thumb drive with MP4 files. No DVDs. They never sent me DVDs despite my asking over and over again.

'Please don't waste your money. They are not cheap. Please stay away from this company.

Their estimate is 10-12 weeks. My order is pushing 20 weeks and the only response I receive to inquiries or complaints is "sorry for your inconvenience." Southtree is not holding up its end of our good-faith agreement.

I have been given reasoning related to high volume and short staff. Here's the problem with that: A company which is truly committed to the customer experience does not pass its inconveniences and problems on to the customer. Southree's challenges are not mine. Customers should not be the ones to make sacrifices for a company's inability to properly staff, adequately hire, or effectively manage workload.

Staffing shortages abound, but good companies step up, exercise basic work ethic, and maintain a positive customer experience. High volume or workload is something for which most companies strive. This is an indicator of business growth. Lack of preparation for growth is not the customer's fault. So, the customer should not bear the resulting burden.

Used Southtree to convert old video camera tapes. I paid for the "digital download" option. I waited months and months for tapes to be converted. When I finally received the email that my download was ready, there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING indicating that the download link would ever expire. Photos attached! I had a baby around this time and forgot to download them right away.

Fast-forward about a year later, I finally got to the bottom of my to-do list and went to download my videos. They were gone. After going back and forth with customer service a number of times, I find out that I can pay $20 for a "Legacybox" subscription, THEN ALSO PAY another $20 for my download link to be resent. I go through this entire charade, am out another $40+, and STILL do not receive a download link. Sidenote---the Legacybox fee is an annual subscription service, so I will then have to go through the legwork of CANCELLING this service once I finally get my files.

Next comes ongoing phone tag with customer service reps as I cannot get a clear answer on how to actually access my files. The amount of time and money I have spent on this is 100% not worth it. Stay far away from this service.

For the record, there is a note on the Southtree website when first choosing the "download link option" for file delivery, stating that the link will be active for "30 days." But, that is never stated again anywhere on any materials I received. Then, the customer service rep I spoke to told me the link is active for "60 days." I honestly would not be angry about the expired link if the expiration time had been CLEARLY STATED in my digital download email.

On August 19,2023 I concluded my research on the available options to FINALLY digitize (2) two valuable VCR Video tapes that I have had since 1992. I chose Southtree and I am ecstatic about my choice. Throughout the process, I was kept apprised of the status via their website's VISUAL TIMELINE, and courteous professional emails from Syngyn. Brett, Zach, Rachel, Dee, and Dawn are the Southtree associates who completed my task of digitizing my memories to a Google Drive Download on September 7th, and my original tapes arrived safe and sound on my doorstep on September 9th. The quality is fantastic and better than I had expected. I know that issues happen, and things go wrong at times, but it is how you handle them and I am convinced that this team would handle any issues professionally and with empathy. Best in my book! Kudos to the team! Thank you!

Pros - I received my originals back.
Cons - it took months to complete my order. Customer service is terrible, basically non existent. They don't leave the link up long enough to download your pictures. I wouldn't trust them with my memories again.

I sent Southtree 95 Hi8 Sony Camcorder tapes for conversion to mp4 files. Their website is slick, but their quality control is horrible and their customer service to correct the problems has been exceedingly viscous. They returned one box of tapes very poorly packaged. I sent twice as many tapes to The Digitize Center where there were no problems with any tapes. I wish I had searched the web for reviews of Southtree before buying. Their reviews on Yelp and elsewhere are very bad. Avoid Southtree.

Don't send them your originals if you don't want to lose them.

I sent them my original cassettes (2) of my grandparents who have passed away. They did a terrible job of converting them. I could barely hear the voices. When I contacted them back, they asked me to send those back so that they could rework it. I did.

I received a notice on Dec. 21st, 2022 confirming that they had received the return.

Then I received another notice on Dec. 27th, 2022 to let me know that they were finished working on them. It said nothing about when it will be coming back to me.

Since then I have contacted them multiple times, via emails and phone. However there has been no response. The website doesn't offer a way to contact them. They are not replying to the multiple emails I have sent. And they don't answer the phone. They just keep playing music. It has been playing for past 30 minutes!

Do not send them your beloved media that you don't want to part with. You may never get them back.

Here's the email from Dec. 21st, 2022:
Southtree ORDER #*******
Hi Sandhia,

Your return has been received here at Southtree and assigned to a lead technician. Our lead technician will review your order and make the requested corrections!

We're giving your order the VIP treatment by providing expedited processing. This means you order should be here no longer than 1-2 weeks. We'll be sure to let you know once your return has been completed!

Thank you again for choosing Southtree!

Here's the one from Dec. 27Th:

Southtree ORDER #*******
Hi Sandhia,

We wanted to give you a heads up that one or more of your items had some pre-existing quality issues that arose in conversion. We still converted it, doing everything we could to ensure the highest possible quality transfer. However, given your media's original quality, the transfer isn't great and doesn't meet our normal quality standard. We've found that our customers still want the digital transfer and prefer we capture the footage, even if it's poor quality.

I would give Southtree zero stars if it was possible. This company is essentially stealing people's money. They converted 5 mini DV tapes for me into 5 digital files. Sounds easy right? Wrong... two of the files simply won't open. The remaining 3 well how best to put this... are utter garbage. As well as one of the files just having gray scrambled static, the other two are grainy black and white images converted from full color tape recordings.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY! They will take your money and tell you it's your fault that the tapes are bad and that is how they were converted. They take no responsibility for poor quality instead pocketing your cash and telling you to suck it up if you don't like the results.

Awful awful company - avoid like the plague.

I had a great experience using Southtree! They were excellent to work and they they kept me informed every step of the way. Some of my tapes were falling apart and they somehow managed convert them. It has been such a blast watching old Christmas and birthday celebrations when my kids were so very young. Such sweet memories. Along with the thumb drive I got for myself, I got each of my kids a thumb drive made as a Christmas gift so they'll have their old memories forever too. Thanks Southtree!

Why do I say that? I asked them to turn 31 music cassettes into digital. They did. But what they sent back was incredibly poorly handled. What I got back was 62 WAV files listed as:
*******-01A-000. Wav
*******-01B-000. Wav
*******-02A-000. Wav
*******-02B-000. Wav
*******-03A-000. Wav... and so forth.

There was NO OTHER information provided as to WHICH files came from WHICH tape. I can assume that "01A" and "01B" and so forth are from the same tape. But no other information is provided to link "wav" to tape. I may have to find some other group to who do this without leaving the customer getting an un-organized pile of dung. This bunch is simply not worth either the money I put in or the difficult time I'll have to do to figure out what the f*** each file has.